Chapter VIDescription of the mission territory and towns founded by the Jesuits—Their endeavours to attract the Indians—Religious feasts and processions—Agricultural and commercial organizationsWith the death of Cardenas the most dangerous enemy the Jesuits ever had in Paraguay had disappeared. They worsted him, and drove him from his see; but the movement set on foot by him and the calumnies he levelled at their Order still remained and flourished, and in the end prevailed against them and drove them from the land. A calumny is hard to kill; mankind in general cherish it; they never let it die, and, if it languishes, resuscitate it under another form; they hold to it in evil and in good repute, so that, once fairly rooted, it goes on growing like a forest-tree throughout the centuries. Therefore, the charges against the Jesuits in Paraguay, which Cardenas first started, are with us still, and warp our judgment as to the doings of the Order in the missions of the Paraná and Uruguay even until to-day.But neither calumny nor the raids of the Paulistas, nor yet the jealousy of the Spanish settlers in Paraguay, deterred the Jesuits from the prosecution of their task. The missions gradually extended, till they ranged from Santa Maria la Mayor, in Paraguay, to San Miguel, in what is now Brazil; and from Jesus, upon the Paraná, to Yapeyu, upon the Uruguay. Most of the country, with the exception of the missions of Jesus and Trinidad, upon the Paraná, which to-day, at least, are only clearings in the primeval forest, is composed of open rolling plains, with wood upon the banks of all the streams. Covered as it was and is with fine, short grass, it formed excellent cattle-breeding country, and hence the great industry of the Indians was to look after stock. The country being so favourable for cattle, they multiplied immoderately, so that in the various establishments (estancias), according to the inventories published by Brabo, their numbers were immense.[148]These open rolling plains, called by the nativescampos quebrantados, are generally studded thickly with stunted palms called yatais,[149]but not so thickly as to spoil the grass which covers them in spring and early summer, and even in winter they remain good feeding ground. Thick clumps of hard-wood trees[150]break up the prairie here and there into peninsulas and islands, and in the hollows and rocky valleys bushy palmetto rises above a horse’s knees. In general the soil is of a rich bright red, which, gleaming through the trees, gives a peculiarly warm colour to the land. All the French Jesuit writers refer to it as ‘la terre rouge des missions’. The Jesuits used it and another earth of a yellow shade for painting their churches and their houses in the mission territory. Its composition is rather sandy, though after rain it makes thick mud, and renders travelling most laborious. The flowers and shrubs of the territory are quite as interesting and still more varied than are the trees. Many of the Jesuits were botanists, and the works of Fathers Montenegro,[151]Sigismund Asperger and Lozano are most curious, and give descriptions and lists of many of the plants unclassified even to-day. The celebrated Bonpland, so long detained by Dr. Francia in Paraguay, unfortunately never published anything; but modern writers[152]have done much, though still the flora of the whole country is but most imperfectly known, and much remains to do before it is all classified. TheCroton succirubrus(from which a resin known as ‘sangre-de-drago’ is extracted), the sumaha (bombax—the fruit of which yields a fine vegetable silk), the erythroxylon or coca of Paraguay, the incienso or incense-tree of the Jesuits, are some of the most remarkable of the myriad shrubs. But if the shrubs are myriad, the flowers are past the power of man to count. Lianas, with their yellow and red and purple clusters of blossoms, like enormous bunches of grapes, hang from the forest-trees. In the open glades upon the ñandubays,[153]the algarrobos, and the espinillos, hang various Orchidaceæ,[154]called by the natives ‘flores del aire’, covering the trees with their aerial roots, their hanging blossoms, and their foliage of tender green. The Labiatæ, Compositæ, Daturæ, Umbelliferæ, Convolvulaceæ, and many other species, cover the ground in spring or run up trees and bushes after the fashion of our honeysuckle and the traveller’s joy.The lakes and backwaters of rivers are covered with myriads of water-lilies (all lumped together by the natives as ‘camalote’), whilst in the woodland pools the Victoria Regis carpets the water with its giant leaves. In every wood the orange and the lemon with the sweet lime have become wild, and form great thickets. Each farm andranchohas its orange-grove, beneath the shade of which I have so often camped, that the scent of orange-blossom always brings back to me the dense primeval woods, the silent plains, the quiet Indians, and the unnavigated waterways, in which the alligators basked. Except the Sierra de Mbaracayu,[155]on the north-east, throughout the mission territory there are no mountains of considerable height; and through the middle of the country run the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, the latter forming the boundary on the south-east. The rolling plains and woods alternate with great marshes calledesteros, which in some districts, as of that of Ñeembucu, cover large tracts of land, forming in winter an almost impenetrable morass, and in the spring and early summer excellent feeding-ground for sheep. Throughout the territory the climate is healthy, except towards the woody northern hills. With this rich territory and the false reports of mines, which even unsuccessful exploration could not dispel, it is but natural that the Jesuits were hated far and wide. It must have been annoying to a society composed, as were the greater portion of the Spanish settlements in Paraguay, of adventurers, who treated the Indians as brute beasts,[156]to see a preserve of Indians separated from their territory by no great barrier of Nature, and still beyond their power.[157]Bonpland, in speaking of the country, says: ‘The whole of the land exceeds description; at every step one meets with things useful and new in natural history.’ Such also was the opinion of the French travellers Demersay and D’Orbigny; of Colonel du Graty, whose interesting work (‘La République du Paraguay’, Brussels, 1862) is one of the best on the country; the recent French explorer Bourgade la Dardye, and of all those who have ever visited the missions of Paraguay.[158]In this rich territory the Jesuits, when, after infinite trouble, they had united a sufficient[159]quantity of Indians, formed them into townships, almost all of which were built upon one plan. In Paraguay itself only some three or four remain; but they remain so well preserved that, by the help of contemporary accounts, it is easy to reconstruct almost exactly what the missions must have been like during the Jesuits’ rule.[160]Built round a square, the church and store-houses filled one end, and the dwellings of the Indians, formed of sun-dried bricks or wattled canes in three long pent-houses, completed the three sides. In general, the houses were of enormous length, after the fashion of a St. Simonian phalanstery, or of a ‘miners’ row’ in Lanarkshire. Each family had its own apartments, which were but separated from the apartments of the next by a lath-and-plaster wall, called in Spanishtabique; but one veranda and one roof served for a hundred or more families. The space in the middle of the square was carpeted with the finest grass, kept short by being pastured close by sheep. The churches, sometimes built of stone, and sometimes of the hard woods with which the country abounds, were beyond all description splendid, taking into consideration the remoteness of the Jesuit towns from the outside world. Frequently—as, for instance, in the mission of Los Apostoles—the churches had three aisles, and were adorned with lofty towers, rich altars,[161]super-altars, and statuary, brought at great expense from Italy and Spain. Though the churches were often built of stone, it was not usual for the houses of the Indians to be so built; but in situations where stone was plentiful, as at the mission of San Borja, the houses of the Jesuits were of masonry, with verandas held up by columns, and with staircases with balustrades of sculptured stone.[162]The ordinary ground-plan of the priest’s house was that of the Spanish Moorish dwelling, so like in all its details to a Roman house at Pompeii or at Herculaneum. Built round a square courtyard, with a fountain in the middle, the Jesuits’ house formed but a portion of a sort of inner town, which was surrounded by a wall, in which a gate, closed by a porter’s lodge, communicated with the outside world. Within the wall was situated the church (although it had an entrance to the plaza), the rooms of the inferior priest, a garden, a guest-chamber, stables, and a store-house, in which were kept the arms belonging to the town, the corn, flour, and wool, and the provisions necessary for life in a remote and often dangerous place. In every case the houses were of one story; the furniture was modest, and in general home-made; in every room hung images and pious pictures, the latter often painted by the Indians themselves. In the smaller missions two Jesuits managed all the Indians.[163]The greatest difficulty which the Jesuits had to face was the natural indolence of their neophytes. Quite unaccustomed as they were to regular work of any kind, the ordinary European system, as practised in the Spanish settlements, promptly reduced them to despair, and often killed them off in hundreds. Therefore the Jesuits instituted the semi-communal system of agriculture and of public works with which their name will be associated for ever in America.[164]The celebrated Dr. Francia, dictator of Paraguay, used to refer to the Jesuits as ‘cunning rogues’,[165]and, as he certainly himself was versed in every phase of cunningness, perhaps his estimate—to some extent, at least—was just. A rogue in politics is but a man who disagrees with you; but, still, it wanted no little knowledge of mankind to present a daily task to men, unversed in any kind of labour, as of the nature of a pleasure in itself. The difficulty was enormous, as the Indians seemed never to have come under the primeval curse, but passed their lives in wandering about, occasionally cultivating just sufficient for their needs. Whether a missionary, Jesuit, or Jansenist, Protestant, Catholic, or Mohammedan, does well in forcing his own mode of life and faith on those who live a happier, freer life than any his instructor can hold out to them is a moot point. Only the future can resolve the question, and judge of what we do to-day—no doubt with good intentions, but with the ignorance born of our self-conceit. Much of the misery of the world has been brought about with good intentions; but of the Jesuits, at least, it can be said that what they did in Paraguay did not spread death and extinction to the tribes with whom they dealt.[166]So to the task of agriculture the Jesuits marshalled their neophytes to the sound of music, and in procession to the fields, with a saint borne high aloft, the community each day at sunrise took its way. Along the paths, at stated intervals, were shrines of saints, and before each of them they prayed, and between each shrine sang hymns.[167]As the procession advanced, it became gradually smaller as groups of Indians dropped off to work the various fields, and finally the priest and acolyte with the musicians returned alone.[168]At mid-day, before eating, they all united and sang hymns, and then, after their meal and siesta, returned to work till sundown, when the procession again re-formed, and the labourers, singing, returned to their abodes. A pleasing and Arcadian style of tillage, and different from the system of the ‘swinked’ labourer in more northern climes. But even then the hymnal day was not concluded; for after a brief rest they all repaired to church to sing the ‘rosary’, and then to sup and bed. On rainy days they worked at other industries in the same half-Arcadian, half-communistic manner, only they sang their hymns in church instead of in the fields. The system was so different to that under which the Indians endured their lives in theencomiendasand themitasof the Spanish settlements, that the fact alone is sufficient to account for much of the contemporary hatred which the Jesuits incurred.Imagine a semi-communistic settlement set close to the borders of Rhodesia, in which thousands of Kaffirs passed a life analogous to that passed by the Indians of the missions—cared for and fed by the community, looked after in every smallest particular of their lives—and what a flood of calumny would be let loose upon the unfortunate devisers of the scheme! Firstly, to withdraw thousands of ‘natives’ from the labour market would be a crime against all progress, and then to treat them kindly would be heresy, and to seclude them from the contamination of the scum of Europe in the settlements would be termed unnatural; for we know that native races derive most benefit from free competition with the least fitted of our population to instruct. But besides agriculture the enormous cattle-farms[169]of the mission territory gave occupation to many of the neophytes. The life on cattle-farms gave less scope for supervision, and we may suppose that the herders and the cattlemen were more like Gauchos; but Gauchos under religious discipline, half-centaurs in the field, sitting a plunging half-wild colt as if they were part of him, and when on foot at home submissive to the Jesuits, constant in church, but not so fierce and bloodthirsty as their descendants soon became after the withdrawal of the mission rule.As well as agriculture andestancialife, the Jesuits had introduced amongst the Indians most of the arts and trades of Europe. By the inventories taken by Bucareli, Viceroy of Buenos Ayres, at the expulsion of the Order, we find that they wove cotton largely; sometimes they made as much as eight thousand five hundred yards of cloth in a single town in the space of two or three months.[170]And, in addition to weaving, they had tanneries, carpenters’ shops, tailors, hat-makers, coopers, cordage-makers, boat-builders, cartwrights, joiners, and almost every industry useful and necessary to life. They also made arms and powder, musical instruments, and had silversmiths, musicians, painters, turners, and printers to work their printing-presses: for many books were printed at the missions,[171]and they produced manuscripts as finely executed as those made by the monks in European monasteries.All theestancias, the agricultural lands and workshops were, so to speak, the property of the community; that is to say, the community worked them in common, was fed and maintained by their productions, the whole under the direction of the two Jesuits who lived in every town. A portion calledtupinambalin Guaraní was set aside especially for the maintenance of orphans and of widows. The cattle and the horses, with the exception of ‘los caballos del santo’, destined for show at feasts, were also used in common. The surplus of the capital was reserved to purchase necessary commodities from Buenos Ayres and from Spain.[172]Each family received from the common stock sufficient for its maintenance during good conduct, for the Jesuits held in its entirety the Pauline dictum that if a man will not work, then neither shall he eat. But as they held it, so they practised it themselves, for their lives were most laborious—teaching and preaching, and acting as overseers to the Indians in their labours continually, from the first moment of their arrival at the missions till their death. Thus, if the mayor of the township complained of any man for remissness at his work, he received no rations till he had improved.To inculcate habits of providence amongst the Indians, always inclined to consume whatever was given to them and go fasting afterwards, they issued the provisions but once a week, and when they killed their oxen forced the Indians to ‘jerk’[173]a certain quantity of beef to last throughout the week. Vegetables each family was obliged to plant both in their gardens and in the common fields; and all that were not actually consumed were dealt out to the workers in the common workshops or preserved for sale.Certain of the Indians owned their own cows and horses, and had gardens in which they worked; but all the product was obliged to be disposed of to the Jesuits for the common good, and in exchange for them they gave knives, scissors, cloth, and looking-glasses, and other articles made in the outside world. Clothes were served out to every Indian, and consisted for the men of trousers, coarseponchos, straw hats or caps, and shirts; but neither men nor women ever wore shoes, and the sole costume of the latter was the Guaranítipoi,[174]a long and sleeveless shift cut rather high, and with coarse embroidery round the shoulders, and made of a rough cotton cloth. For ornaments they had glass beads and rosaries of brass or silver, with silver rings, and necklaces of glass or horn, from which hung crucifixes. Thus food and clothing cost the Jesuits[175](or the community) but little, and a rude plenty was the order of the land. The greatest luxury of the Indians wasmaté, and to produce it they worked in theyerbalesin the same way in which they worked their fields—in bands and with processions, to the sound of hymns and headed by a priest.This, then, was the system by means of which the Jesuits succeeded, without employing force of any kind, which in their case would have been quite impossible, lost as they were amongst the crowd of Indians, in making the Guaranís endure the yoke of toil. The semi-communal character of their rule accounts for the hostility of Liberals who, like Azara, saw in competition the best road to progress, but who, like him, in their consuming thirst for progress lost sight of happiness.In addition to the means described, the Jesuits had recourse to frequent religious feasts, for which the calendar gave them full scope, so that the life in a Jesuit mission was much diversified and rendered pleasant to the Indians, who have a rooted love of show. Each mission had, of course, its patron saint,[176]and on his day nobody worked, whilst all was joyfulness and simple mirth. At break of day a discharge of rockets and of firearms and peals upon the bells announced the joyful morn. Then the whole population flocked to church to listen to an early mass. Those who could find no room inside the church stood in long lines outside the door, which remained open during the ceremony. Mass over, each one ran to prepare himself for his part in the function, the Jesuits having taken care, by multiplying offices and employments, to leave no man without a direct share in all the others did.[177]The humblest and the highest had their part, and the heaviest burden, no doubt, fell upon the two Jesuits,[178]who were answerable for all. The foremost duty was to get the procession ready for the march, and saddle ‘los caballos del santo’[179]to serve as escort, mounted by Indians in rich dresses, kept specially for feasts.The inventory of the town of Los Apostoles[180]enables us to reconstruct, with some attempt at accuracy, how the procession was formed and how it took its way. All the militia of the town were in attendance, mounted on their best horses, and armed with lances (chuzos), lazo, bolas, and a few with guns. The officers of the Indians rode at their head, dressed out in gorgeous clothes, and troops of dancers, at stated intervals, performed a sort of Pyrrhic dance between the squadrons of the cavalry.[181]In the front of all rode on a white horse the Alferez Real,[182]dressed in a doublet of blue velvet richly laced with gold, a waistcoat of brocade, and with short velvet breeches gartered with silver lace; upon his feet shoes decked with silver buckles, and the whole scheme completed by a gold-laced hat. In his right hand he held the royal standard fastened to a long cane which ended in a silver knob. A sword was by his side, which, as he only could have worn it on such occasions, and as the ‘horses of the saint’ were not unlikely as ticklish as most horses of the prairies of Entre Rios and Corrientes are wont to be, must have embarrassed him considerably. Behind him came the Corregidor, arrayed in yellow satin, with a silk waistcoat and gold buttons, breeches of yellow velvet, and a hat equal in magnificence to that worn by his bold compeer. The two Alcaldes, less violently dressed, wore straw-coloured silk suits, with satin waistcoats of the same colour, and hats turned up with gold. Other officials, as the Commissario, Maestre de Campo, and the Sargento Mayor, were quite as gaily dressed in scarlet coats, with crimson damask waistcoats trimmed with silver lace,[183]red breeches, and black hats adorned with heavy lace. In the bright Paraguayan sunshine, with the primeval forest for a background, or in some mission in the midst of a vast plain beside the Paraná, they must have looked as gorgeous as a flight of parrots from the neighbouring woods, and have made a Turneresque effect, ambling along, a blaze of colours, quite as self-satisfied in their finery as if ‘the rainbow had been entail settled on them and their heirs male.’ Quite probably their broad, flat noses, and their long, lank hair, their faces fixed immovably, as if they were carved in ñandubay, contrasted strangely with their finery. But there were none to judge—no one to make remarks; most likely all was conscience and tender heart, and not their bitterest enemy has laid the charge of humour to the Jesuits’ account.As in the inventories of the thirty towns I find no mention either of stockings or of shoes for Indians, with the exception of the low shoes and buckles worn by the Alferez Real, it seems the gorgeous costumes ended at the knee, and that these popinjays rode barefoot, with, perhaps, large iron Gaucho spurs fastened by strips of mare-hide round their ankles, and hanging down below their naked feet. But, not content with the procession of the elders in parrot guise, there was a parody of parodies in thecabildo infantil, the band composed of children, who, with the self-same titles as their elders, and in the self-same clothes adjusted to their size, rode close upon their heels. Lastly, as Charlevoix tells us, came ‘des lions et des tigres, mais bien enchainés afin qu’ils ne troublerent point la fête,’ and so the whole procession took its way towards the church.The church, all hung with velvet and brocade, was all ablaze with lights, and fumes of incense (no doubt necessary) almost obscured the nave. Upon the right and left hand of the choir (which, as is usual in Spain, was in the middle of the church) the younger Indians were seated all in rows, the boys and girls being separated, as was the custom in all the missions of the Jesuits, who, no doubt, were convinced of the advisability of the saying that ‘entre santa y santo, pared de cal y canto.’[184]The Indians who had some office, and who wore the clothes[185]I have described, were seated or knelt in rows, and at the outside stood the people of the town dressed in white cotton, their simple clothes, no doubt, forming an effective background to their more parti-coloured brethren kneeling in the front. Throughout the church the men and women were separated, and if a rumour of an incursion of Paulistas was in the air, the Indians carried arms even in the sacred buildings and at the solemn feasts. Mass was celebrated with a full band, the oboe, fagot, lute, harp, cornet, clarinet, violin, viola, and all other kinds of music, figuring in the inventories of the thirty towns. Indeed, in two of the inventories[186]an opera called ‘Santiago’ is mentioned, which had special costumes and properties to put it on the stage. Mass over, the procession was reconstituted outside the church, and after parading once more through the town broke up, and the Indians devoted the night to feasting, and not infrequently danced till break of day.Such were the outward arts with which the Jesuits sought to attach the simple people, to whom they stood in the position not only of pastors and masters both in one, but also as protectors from the Paulistas on one side, and on the other from the Spaniards of the settlements, who, with theirencomiendasand their European system of free competition between man and man, were perhaps unknowingly the direst enemies of the whole Indian race. There is, as it would seem, implanted in the minds of almost all primitive peoples, such as the Guaranís, a solidarity, a clinging kinship, which if once broken down by competition, unrestrained after our modern fashion, inevitably leads to their decay. Hence the keen hatred to the Chinese in California and in Australia. Naturally, those whom we hate, and in a measure fear, we also vilify, and this has given rise to all those accusations of Oriental vice (as if the vice of any Oriental, however much depraved, was comparable to that of citizens of Paris or of London), of barbarism, and the like, so freely levelled against the unfortunate Chinese.In Paraguay nothing is more remarkable in a market in the country than the way in which the people will not undersell each other, even refusing to part with goods a fraction lower than the price which they consider fair.[187]It may be that the Jesuits would have done better to endeavour to equip their neophytes more fully, so as to take their place in the battle of the world. It may be that the simple, happy lives they led were too opposed to the general scheme of outside human life to find acceptance or a place in our cosmogony. But one thing I am sure of—that the innocent delight of the poor Indian Alferez Real, mounted upon his horse, dressed in his motley, barefooted, and overshadowed by his gold-laced hat, was as entire as if he had eaten of all the fruits of all the trees of knowledge of his time, and so perhaps the Jesuits were wise.Strangely enough—but, then, how strangely all extremes meet in humanity!—the Jesuits alone (at least, in Paraguay) seem to have apprehended, as the Arabs certainly have done from immemorial time, that the first duty of a man is to enjoy his life. Art, science, literature, ambition—all the frivolities with which men occupy themselves—have their due place; but life is first, and in some strange, mysterious way the Jesuits felt it, though, no doubt, they would have been the first to deny it with a thousand oaths. But in a Jesuit mission all was not feasting or processioning, for with such neighbours as the Mamelucos they had to keep themselves prepared.[188]As for their better government in home affairs each mission had its police, with officers[189]chosen by the Jesuits amongst the Indians, so for exterior defence they had militia, and in it thecaciques[190]of the different tribes held principal command. Most likely over them, or at their elbows, were set priests who before entering the Company of Jesus had been soldiers: for there were many such amongst the Jesuits. As their own founder once had been a soldier, so the Company was popular amongst those soldiers who from some cause or other had changed their swords to crucifixes, and taken service in the ranks of Christ.[191]As it was most important, both for defence and policy, to keep thecaciquescontent, they were distinguished by better treatment than the others in many different ways. Their food was more abundant, and a guard of Indians was on perpetual duty round the houses where they lived; these they employed as servants and as messengers to summon distant companies of Indians to the field. Their method of organization must have been like that of the Boers or of the Arabs; for every Indian belonged to a company, which now and then was brought together for evolutions in the field or for a period of training, after the fashion of our militia or the German Landwehr. Perhaps this system of an armed militia, always ready for the field, was what, above all other reasons, enabled their detractors to represent the Jesuits as feared and unpopular. Why, it was asked, does this community of priests maintain an army in its territories? No one remembered that if such were not the case the missions could not have existed for a year without a force to defend their borders from the Paulistas. Everyone forgot that Fathers Montoya and Del Taño had obtained special permission from the King for the Indians of the missions to bear arms; and, as no human being is grateful for anything but contumelious treatment, the Spanish settlers conveniently forgot how many times a Jesuit army had saved their territories. The body of three thousand Guaranís sent at the expense of the Company to assist the Spaniards against the Portuguese at the attack upon the Colonia del Sacramento[192]on the river Plate, in 1678, was quite forgotten, together with the innumerable contingents sent by the Jesuits at the demand of Spanish governors against the Chaco Indians, the Payaguás, and even against the distant Calchaquis, in what is now the province of Jujuy. Even when an English pirate, called in the Spanish histories Roque Barloque (explained by some to be plain Richard Barlow), appeared off Buenos Ayres, the undaunted neophytes shrank not a moment from going to the assistance of their co-religionists against the ‘Lutheran dog’.[193]Lastly, all Spanish governors and writers, both contemporaneous and at the end of the eighteenth century, seem to forget that if the Jesuits had an army of neophytes within their territory the fact was known and approved of at the court of Spain.[194]But it appears that Calvin had many coadjutors in his policy of ‘Jesuitas aut necandi aut calumniis opponendi sunt.’[195]When a Jesuit army took the field, driving before it sufficient cattle to subsist upon, and with itscaballadaof spare horses upon its flank, it must have resembled many a Gaucho army I have seen in Entre Rios five-and-twenty years ago. The only difference seems to have been that the Gauchos of yesterday did not use bows and arrows, although they might have done so with as much benefit to themselves, and no more danger to their enemies, than was occasioned by the rusty, ill-conditioned guns they used to bear. The Indians were armed with bows, and in their expeditions each Indian carried one hundred and fifty arrows tipped with iron. Others had firearms, but all bore bolas on their saddles, and carried lazos and long lances,[196]which, like the Pampa Indians, they used in mounting their horses, placing one hand upon the mane, and vaulting into the saddles with the other leaning on the lance. The infantry were armed with lances and a few guns; they also carried bolas, but they trusted most to slings, for which they carried bags of hide, with a provision of smooth round stones, and used them dexterously. On several occasions their rude militia gave proofs of stubborn valour, and, as they fought under the Jesuits’ eyes, no doubt acquitted themselves as men would who looked upon their priests almost in the light of gods. But agriculture and cattle-breeding were not all the resources of the missions; for the Jesuits engaged in commerce largely, both with the outer world and by the intricate and curious barter system which they had set on foot for the mutual convenience of the different mission towns. In many of the inventories printed by Brabo, one comes across the entry ‘Deudas’, showing a sort of account current between the towns for various articles. Thus, they exchanged cattle for cotton, sugar for rice, wheat for pig-iron or tools from Europe; as no account of interest ever appears in any inventory as between town and town, it seems the Jesuits anticipated Socialism—at least, so far as that they bought and sold for use, and not for gain. Although between the towns of their own territory all was arranged for mutual convenience, yet in their dealings with the outside world the Jesuits adhered to what are known as ‘business principles’. These principles, if I mistake not, have been deified by politicians with their ‘Buy in the cheapest, sell in the dearest’ tag, and therefore even the sternest Protestant or Jansenist (if such there still exist) can have no stone to throw at the Company of Jesus for its participation in that system which has made the whole world glad.Cotton and linen cloth, tobacco, hides, woods of the various hard-wood forests of the country, and, above all,yerba-maté, were their chief articles of export to the outside world. Their nearest market was in Buenos Ayres, and to that port they sent theiryerbain boats made at their own yards, of which they had several, but notably at Yapeyú upon the Uruguay. The money that was made was sent to the Superior of the missions, who had the disposition of the way in which it was dispensed, either for use at home or to be sent to Europe for necessary goods. As well asyerba-maté, they sent great quantities of hides. The inventories of the towns taken at the expulsion state that the number of green hides[197]exported annually was fifty thousand, together with six thousand cured; in addition they sold from three to four arrobas[198]of horse-hair, and wood to the value of twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars every year. The total export of theiryerbaranged between eighty and one hundred thousand arrobas, which at the lowest price could not have been sold at a profit under seven dollars an arroba,[199]so that the income[200]of the thirty towns must have been relatively large.[201]Two or three hundred barrels of honey[202]and some three or four thousand arrobas of tobacco made up the sum total of their exports, though, had they needed money, it might have been increased in such a country, and with so many willing labourers, almost indefinitely.Thus it will be seen that the missions were organized both agriculturally and commercially so as to be almost self-supporting, and that of the mere necessaries of life they had sufficient for exportation, no small achievement when we consider how averse from labour were the Indians with whom they had to deal. But that nothing should be wanting that a civilized community could possibly desire, they had their prisons, with good store of chains, fetters, whips, and all the other instruments with which the moral code is generally enforced. The most usual punishment was whipping;[203]and the crimes most frequent were drunkenness, neglect of work, and bigamy, which latter lapse from virtue the Jesuits chastised severely, not thinking, being celibates themselves, that not unlikely it was apt to turn into its own punishment without the aid of stripes.
Description of the mission territory and towns founded by the Jesuits—Their endeavours to attract the Indians—Religious feasts and processions—Agricultural and commercial organizations
With the death of Cardenas the most dangerous enemy the Jesuits ever had in Paraguay had disappeared. They worsted him, and drove him from his see; but the movement set on foot by him and the calumnies he levelled at their Order still remained and flourished, and in the end prevailed against them and drove them from the land. A calumny is hard to kill; mankind in general cherish it; they never let it die, and, if it languishes, resuscitate it under another form; they hold to it in evil and in good repute, so that, once fairly rooted, it goes on growing like a forest-tree throughout the centuries. Therefore, the charges against the Jesuits in Paraguay, which Cardenas first started, are with us still, and warp our judgment as to the doings of the Order in the missions of the Paraná and Uruguay even until to-day.
But neither calumny nor the raids of the Paulistas, nor yet the jealousy of the Spanish settlers in Paraguay, deterred the Jesuits from the prosecution of their task. The missions gradually extended, till they ranged from Santa Maria la Mayor, in Paraguay, to San Miguel, in what is now Brazil; and from Jesus, upon the Paraná, to Yapeyu, upon the Uruguay. Most of the country, with the exception of the missions of Jesus and Trinidad, upon the Paraná, which to-day, at least, are only clearings in the primeval forest, is composed of open rolling plains, with wood upon the banks of all the streams. Covered as it was and is with fine, short grass, it formed excellent cattle-breeding country, and hence the great industry of the Indians was to look after stock. The country being so favourable for cattle, they multiplied immoderately, so that in the various establishments (estancias), according to the inventories published by Brabo, their numbers were immense.[148]
These open rolling plains, called by the nativescampos quebrantados, are generally studded thickly with stunted palms called yatais,[149]but not so thickly as to spoil the grass which covers them in spring and early summer, and even in winter they remain good feeding ground. Thick clumps of hard-wood trees[150]break up the prairie here and there into peninsulas and islands, and in the hollows and rocky valleys bushy palmetto rises above a horse’s knees. In general the soil is of a rich bright red, which, gleaming through the trees, gives a peculiarly warm colour to the land. All the French Jesuit writers refer to it as ‘la terre rouge des missions’. The Jesuits used it and another earth of a yellow shade for painting their churches and their houses in the mission territory. Its composition is rather sandy, though after rain it makes thick mud, and renders travelling most laborious. The flowers and shrubs of the territory are quite as interesting and still more varied than are the trees. Many of the Jesuits were botanists, and the works of Fathers Montenegro,[151]Sigismund Asperger and Lozano are most curious, and give descriptions and lists of many of the plants unclassified even to-day. The celebrated Bonpland, so long detained by Dr. Francia in Paraguay, unfortunately never published anything; but modern writers[152]have done much, though still the flora of the whole country is but most imperfectly known, and much remains to do before it is all classified. TheCroton succirubrus(from which a resin known as ‘sangre-de-drago’ is extracted), the sumaha (bombax—the fruit of which yields a fine vegetable silk), the erythroxylon or coca of Paraguay, the incienso or incense-tree of the Jesuits, are some of the most remarkable of the myriad shrubs. But if the shrubs are myriad, the flowers are past the power of man to count. Lianas, with their yellow and red and purple clusters of blossoms, like enormous bunches of grapes, hang from the forest-trees. In the open glades upon the ñandubays,[153]the algarrobos, and the espinillos, hang various Orchidaceæ,[154]called by the natives ‘flores del aire’, covering the trees with their aerial roots, their hanging blossoms, and their foliage of tender green. The Labiatæ, Compositæ, Daturæ, Umbelliferæ, Convolvulaceæ, and many other species, cover the ground in spring or run up trees and bushes after the fashion of our honeysuckle and the traveller’s joy.
The lakes and backwaters of rivers are covered with myriads of water-lilies (all lumped together by the natives as ‘camalote’), whilst in the woodland pools the Victoria Regis carpets the water with its giant leaves. In every wood the orange and the lemon with the sweet lime have become wild, and form great thickets. Each farm andranchohas its orange-grove, beneath the shade of which I have so often camped, that the scent of orange-blossom always brings back to me the dense primeval woods, the silent plains, the quiet Indians, and the unnavigated waterways, in which the alligators basked. Except the Sierra de Mbaracayu,[155]on the north-east, throughout the mission territory there are no mountains of considerable height; and through the middle of the country run the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, the latter forming the boundary on the south-east. The rolling plains and woods alternate with great marshes calledesteros, which in some districts, as of that of Ñeembucu, cover large tracts of land, forming in winter an almost impenetrable morass, and in the spring and early summer excellent feeding-ground for sheep. Throughout the territory the climate is healthy, except towards the woody northern hills. With this rich territory and the false reports of mines, which even unsuccessful exploration could not dispel, it is but natural that the Jesuits were hated far and wide. It must have been annoying to a society composed, as were the greater portion of the Spanish settlements in Paraguay, of adventurers, who treated the Indians as brute beasts,[156]to see a preserve of Indians separated from their territory by no great barrier of Nature, and still beyond their power.[157]Bonpland, in speaking of the country, says: ‘The whole of the land exceeds description; at every step one meets with things useful and new in natural history.’ Such also was the opinion of the French travellers Demersay and D’Orbigny; of Colonel du Graty, whose interesting work (‘La République du Paraguay’, Brussels, 1862) is one of the best on the country; the recent French explorer Bourgade la Dardye, and of all those who have ever visited the missions of Paraguay.[158]
In this rich territory the Jesuits, when, after infinite trouble, they had united a sufficient[159]quantity of Indians, formed them into townships, almost all of which were built upon one plan. In Paraguay itself only some three or four remain; but they remain so well preserved that, by the help of contemporary accounts, it is easy to reconstruct almost exactly what the missions must have been like during the Jesuits’ rule.[160]
Built round a square, the church and store-houses filled one end, and the dwellings of the Indians, formed of sun-dried bricks or wattled canes in three long pent-houses, completed the three sides. In general, the houses were of enormous length, after the fashion of a St. Simonian phalanstery, or of a ‘miners’ row’ in Lanarkshire. Each family had its own apartments, which were but separated from the apartments of the next by a lath-and-plaster wall, called in Spanishtabique; but one veranda and one roof served for a hundred or more families. The space in the middle of the square was carpeted with the finest grass, kept short by being pastured close by sheep. The churches, sometimes built of stone, and sometimes of the hard woods with which the country abounds, were beyond all description splendid, taking into consideration the remoteness of the Jesuit towns from the outside world. Frequently—as, for instance, in the mission of Los Apostoles—the churches had three aisles, and were adorned with lofty towers, rich altars,[161]super-altars, and statuary, brought at great expense from Italy and Spain. Though the churches were often built of stone, it was not usual for the houses of the Indians to be so built; but in situations where stone was plentiful, as at the mission of San Borja, the houses of the Jesuits were of masonry, with verandas held up by columns, and with staircases with balustrades of sculptured stone.[162]The ordinary ground-plan of the priest’s house was that of the Spanish Moorish dwelling, so like in all its details to a Roman house at Pompeii or at Herculaneum. Built round a square courtyard, with a fountain in the middle, the Jesuits’ house formed but a portion of a sort of inner town, which was surrounded by a wall, in which a gate, closed by a porter’s lodge, communicated with the outside world. Within the wall was situated the church (although it had an entrance to the plaza), the rooms of the inferior priest, a garden, a guest-chamber, stables, and a store-house, in which were kept the arms belonging to the town, the corn, flour, and wool, and the provisions necessary for life in a remote and often dangerous place. In every case the houses were of one story; the furniture was modest, and in general home-made; in every room hung images and pious pictures, the latter often painted by the Indians themselves. In the smaller missions two Jesuits managed all the Indians.[163]
The greatest difficulty which the Jesuits had to face was the natural indolence of their neophytes. Quite unaccustomed as they were to regular work of any kind, the ordinary European system, as practised in the Spanish settlements, promptly reduced them to despair, and often killed them off in hundreds. Therefore the Jesuits instituted the semi-communal system of agriculture and of public works with which their name will be associated for ever in America.[164]
The celebrated Dr. Francia, dictator of Paraguay, used to refer to the Jesuits as ‘cunning rogues’,[165]and, as he certainly himself was versed in every phase of cunningness, perhaps his estimate—to some extent, at least—was just. A rogue in politics is but a man who disagrees with you; but, still, it wanted no little knowledge of mankind to present a daily task to men, unversed in any kind of labour, as of the nature of a pleasure in itself. The difficulty was enormous, as the Indians seemed never to have come under the primeval curse, but passed their lives in wandering about, occasionally cultivating just sufficient for their needs. Whether a missionary, Jesuit, or Jansenist, Protestant, Catholic, or Mohammedan, does well in forcing his own mode of life and faith on those who live a happier, freer life than any his instructor can hold out to them is a moot point. Only the future can resolve the question, and judge of what we do to-day—no doubt with good intentions, but with the ignorance born of our self-conceit. Much of the misery of the world has been brought about with good intentions; but of the Jesuits, at least, it can be said that what they did in Paraguay did not spread death and extinction to the tribes with whom they dealt.[166]So to the task of agriculture the Jesuits marshalled their neophytes to the sound of music, and in procession to the fields, with a saint borne high aloft, the community each day at sunrise took its way. Along the paths, at stated intervals, were shrines of saints, and before each of them they prayed, and between each shrine sang hymns.[167]As the procession advanced, it became gradually smaller as groups of Indians dropped off to work the various fields, and finally the priest and acolyte with the musicians returned alone.[168]At mid-day, before eating, they all united and sang hymns, and then, after their meal and siesta, returned to work till sundown, when the procession again re-formed, and the labourers, singing, returned to their abodes. A pleasing and Arcadian style of tillage, and different from the system of the ‘swinked’ labourer in more northern climes. But even then the hymnal day was not concluded; for after a brief rest they all repaired to church to sing the ‘rosary’, and then to sup and bed. On rainy days they worked at other industries in the same half-Arcadian, half-communistic manner, only they sang their hymns in church instead of in the fields. The system was so different to that under which the Indians endured their lives in theencomiendasand themitasof the Spanish settlements, that the fact alone is sufficient to account for much of the contemporary hatred which the Jesuits incurred.
Imagine a semi-communistic settlement set close to the borders of Rhodesia, in which thousands of Kaffirs passed a life analogous to that passed by the Indians of the missions—cared for and fed by the community, looked after in every smallest particular of their lives—and what a flood of calumny would be let loose upon the unfortunate devisers of the scheme! Firstly, to withdraw thousands of ‘natives’ from the labour market would be a crime against all progress, and then to treat them kindly would be heresy, and to seclude them from the contamination of the scum of Europe in the settlements would be termed unnatural; for we know that native races derive most benefit from free competition with the least fitted of our population to instruct. But besides agriculture the enormous cattle-farms[169]of the mission territory gave occupation to many of the neophytes. The life on cattle-farms gave less scope for supervision, and we may suppose that the herders and the cattlemen were more like Gauchos; but Gauchos under religious discipline, half-centaurs in the field, sitting a plunging half-wild colt as if they were part of him, and when on foot at home submissive to the Jesuits, constant in church, but not so fierce and bloodthirsty as their descendants soon became after the withdrawal of the mission rule.
As well as agriculture andestancialife, the Jesuits had introduced amongst the Indians most of the arts and trades of Europe. By the inventories taken by Bucareli, Viceroy of Buenos Ayres, at the expulsion of the Order, we find that they wove cotton largely; sometimes they made as much as eight thousand five hundred yards of cloth in a single town in the space of two or three months.[170]And, in addition to weaving, they had tanneries, carpenters’ shops, tailors, hat-makers, coopers, cordage-makers, boat-builders, cartwrights, joiners, and almost every industry useful and necessary to life. They also made arms and powder, musical instruments, and had silversmiths, musicians, painters, turners, and printers to work their printing-presses: for many books were printed at the missions,[171]and they produced manuscripts as finely executed as those made by the monks in European monasteries.
All theestancias, the agricultural lands and workshops were, so to speak, the property of the community; that is to say, the community worked them in common, was fed and maintained by their productions, the whole under the direction of the two Jesuits who lived in every town. A portion calledtupinambalin Guaraní was set aside especially for the maintenance of orphans and of widows. The cattle and the horses, with the exception of ‘los caballos del santo’, destined for show at feasts, were also used in common. The surplus of the capital was reserved to purchase necessary commodities from Buenos Ayres and from Spain.[172]Each family received from the common stock sufficient for its maintenance during good conduct, for the Jesuits held in its entirety the Pauline dictum that if a man will not work, then neither shall he eat. But as they held it, so they practised it themselves, for their lives were most laborious—teaching and preaching, and acting as overseers to the Indians in their labours continually, from the first moment of their arrival at the missions till their death. Thus, if the mayor of the township complained of any man for remissness at his work, he received no rations till he had improved.
To inculcate habits of providence amongst the Indians, always inclined to consume whatever was given to them and go fasting afterwards, they issued the provisions but once a week, and when they killed their oxen forced the Indians to ‘jerk’[173]a certain quantity of beef to last throughout the week. Vegetables each family was obliged to plant both in their gardens and in the common fields; and all that were not actually consumed were dealt out to the workers in the common workshops or preserved for sale.
Certain of the Indians owned their own cows and horses, and had gardens in which they worked; but all the product was obliged to be disposed of to the Jesuits for the common good, and in exchange for them they gave knives, scissors, cloth, and looking-glasses, and other articles made in the outside world. Clothes were served out to every Indian, and consisted for the men of trousers, coarseponchos, straw hats or caps, and shirts; but neither men nor women ever wore shoes, and the sole costume of the latter was the Guaranítipoi,[174]a long and sleeveless shift cut rather high, and with coarse embroidery round the shoulders, and made of a rough cotton cloth. For ornaments they had glass beads and rosaries of brass or silver, with silver rings, and necklaces of glass or horn, from which hung crucifixes. Thus food and clothing cost the Jesuits[175](or the community) but little, and a rude plenty was the order of the land. The greatest luxury of the Indians wasmaté, and to produce it they worked in theyerbalesin the same way in which they worked their fields—in bands and with processions, to the sound of hymns and headed by a priest.
This, then, was the system by means of which the Jesuits succeeded, without employing force of any kind, which in their case would have been quite impossible, lost as they were amongst the crowd of Indians, in making the Guaranís endure the yoke of toil. The semi-communal character of their rule accounts for the hostility of Liberals who, like Azara, saw in competition the best road to progress, but who, like him, in their consuming thirst for progress lost sight of happiness.
In addition to the means described, the Jesuits had recourse to frequent religious feasts, for which the calendar gave them full scope, so that the life in a Jesuit mission was much diversified and rendered pleasant to the Indians, who have a rooted love of show. Each mission had, of course, its patron saint,[176]and on his day nobody worked, whilst all was joyfulness and simple mirth. At break of day a discharge of rockets and of firearms and peals upon the bells announced the joyful morn. Then the whole population flocked to church to listen to an early mass. Those who could find no room inside the church stood in long lines outside the door, which remained open during the ceremony. Mass over, each one ran to prepare himself for his part in the function, the Jesuits having taken care, by multiplying offices and employments, to leave no man without a direct share in all the others did.[177]The humblest and the highest had their part, and the heaviest burden, no doubt, fell upon the two Jesuits,[178]who were answerable for all. The foremost duty was to get the procession ready for the march, and saddle ‘los caballos del santo’[179]to serve as escort, mounted by Indians in rich dresses, kept specially for feasts.
The inventory of the town of Los Apostoles[180]enables us to reconstruct, with some attempt at accuracy, how the procession was formed and how it took its way. All the militia of the town were in attendance, mounted on their best horses, and armed with lances (chuzos), lazo, bolas, and a few with guns. The officers of the Indians rode at their head, dressed out in gorgeous clothes, and troops of dancers, at stated intervals, performed a sort of Pyrrhic dance between the squadrons of the cavalry.[181]In the front of all rode on a white horse the Alferez Real,[182]dressed in a doublet of blue velvet richly laced with gold, a waistcoat of brocade, and with short velvet breeches gartered with silver lace; upon his feet shoes decked with silver buckles, and the whole scheme completed by a gold-laced hat. In his right hand he held the royal standard fastened to a long cane which ended in a silver knob. A sword was by his side, which, as he only could have worn it on such occasions, and as the ‘horses of the saint’ were not unlikely as ticklish as most horses of the prairies of Entre Rios and Corrientes are wont to be, must have embarrassed him considerably. Behind him came the Corregidor, arrayed in yellow satin, with a silk waistcoat and gold buttons, breeches of yellow velvet, and a hat equal in magnificence to that worn by his bold compeer. The two Alcaldes, less violently dressed, wore straw-coloured silk suits, with satin waistcoats of the same colour, and hats turned up with gold. Other officials, as the Commissario, Maestre de Campo, and the Sargento Mayor, were quite as gaily dressed in scarlet coats, with crimson damask waistcoats trimmed with silver lace,[183]red breeches, and black hats adorned with heavy lace. In the bright Paraguayan sunshine, with the primeval forest for a background, or in some mission in the midst of a vast plain beside the Paraná, they must have looked as gorgeous as a flight of parrots from the neighbouring woods, and have made a Turneresque effect, ambling along, a blaze of colours, quite as self-satisfied in their finery as if ‘the rainbow had been entail settled on them and their heirs male.’ Quite probably their broad, flat noses, and their long, lank hair, their faces fixed immovably, as if they were carved in ñandubay, contrasted strangely with their finery. But there were none to judge—no one to make remarks; most likely all was conscience and tender heart, and not their bitterest enemy has laid the charge of humour to the Jesuits’ account.
As in the inventories of the thirty towns I find no mention either of stockings or of shoes for Indians, with the exception of the low shoes and buckles worn by the Alferez Real, it seems the gorgeous costumes ended at the knee, and that these popinjays rode barefoot, with, perhaps, large iron Gaucho spurs fastened by strips of mare-hide round their ankles, and hanging down below their naked feet. But, not content with the procession of the elders in parrot guise, there was a parody of parodies in thecabildo infantil, the band composed of children, who, with the self-same titles as their elders, and in the self-same clothes adjusted to their size, rode close upon their heels. Lastly, as Charlevoix tells us, came ‘des lions et des tigres, mais bien enchainés afin qu’ils ne troublerent point la fête,’ and so the whole procession took its way towards the church.
The church, all hung with velvet and brocade, was all ablaze with lights, and fumes of incense (no doubt necessary) almost obscured the nave. Upon the right and left hand of the choir (which, as is usual in Spain, was in the middle of the church) the younger Indians were seated all in rows, the boys and girls being separated, as was the custom in all the missions of the Jesuits, who, no doubt, were convinced of the advisability of the saying that ‘entre santa y santo, pared de cal y canto.’[184]The Indians who had some office, and who wore the clothes[185]I have described, were seated or knelt in rows, and at the outside stood the people of the town dressed in white cotton, their simple clothes, no doubt, forming an effective background to their more parti-coloured brethren kneeling in the front. Throughout the church the men and women were separated, and if a rumour of an incursion of Paulistas was in the air, the Indians carried arms even in the sacred buildings and at the solemn feasts. Mass was celebrated with a full band, the oboe, fagot, lute, harp, cornet, clarinet, violin, viola, and all other kinds of music, figuring in the inventories of the thirty towns. Indeed, in two of the inventories[186]an opera called ‘Santiago’ is mentioned, which had special costumes and properties to put it on the stage. Mass over, the procession was reconstituted outside the church, and after parading once more through the town broke up, and the Indians devoted the night to feasting, and not infrequently danced till break of day.
Such were the outward arts with which the Jesuits sought to attach the simple people, to whom they stood in the position not only of pastors and masters both in one, but also as protectors from the Paulistas on one side, and on the other from the Spaniards of the settlements, who, with theirencomiendasand their European system of free competition between man and man, were perhaps unknowingly the direst enemies of the whole Indian race. There is, as it would seem, implanted in the minds of almost all primitive peoples, such as the Guaranís, a solidarity, a clinging kinship, which if once broken down by competition, unrestrained after our modern fashion, inevitably leads to their decay. Hence the keen hatred to the Chinese in California and in Australia. Naturally, those whom we hate, and in a measure fear, we also vilify, and this has given rise to all those accusations of Oriental vice (as if the vice of any Oriental, however much depraved, was comparable to that of citizens of Paris or of London), of barbarism, and the like, so freely levelled against the unfortunate Chinese.
In Paraguay nothing is more remarkable in a market in the country than the way in which the people will not undersell each other, even refusing to part with goods a fraction lower than the price which they consider fair.[187]It may be that the Jesuits would have done better to endeavour to equip their neophytes more fully, so as to take their place in the battle of the world. It may be that the simple, happy lives they led were too opposed to the general scheme of outside human life to find acceptance or a place in our cosmogony. But one thing I am sure of—that the innocent delight of the poor Indian Alferez Real, mounted upon his horse, dressed in his motley, barefooted, and overshadowed by his gold-laced hat, was as entire as if he had eaten of all the fruits of all the trees of knowledge of his time, and so perhaps the Jesuits were wise.
Strangely enough—but, then, how strangely all extremes meet in humanity!—the Jesuits alone (at least, in Paraguay) seem to have apprehended, as the Arabs certainly have done from immemorial time, that the first duty of a man is to enjoy his life. Art, science, literature, ambition—all the frivolities with which men occupy themselves—have their due place; but life is first, and in some strange, mysterious way the Jesuits felt it, though, no doubt, they would have been the first to deny it with a thousand oaths. But in a Jesuit mission all was not feasting or processioning, for with such neighbours as the Mamelucos they had to keep themselves prepared.[188]As for their better government in home affairs each mission had its police, with officers[189]chosen by the Jesuits amongst the Indians, so for exterior defence they had militia, and in it thecaciques[190]of the different tribes held principal command. Most likely over them, or at their elbows, were set priests who before entering the Company of Jesus had been soldiers: for there were many such amongst the Jesuits. As their own founder once had been a soldier, so the Company was popular amongst those soldiers who from some cause or other had changed their swords to crucifixes, and taken service in the ranks of Christ.[191]As it was most important, both for defence and policy, to keep thecaciquescontent, they were distinguished by better treatment than the others in many different ways. Their food was more abundant, and a guard of Indians was on perpetual duty round the houses where they lived; these they employed as servants and as messengers to summon distant companies of Indians to the field. Their method of organization must have been like that of the Boers or of the Arabs; for every Indian belonged to a company, which now and then was brought together for evolutions in the field or for a period of training, after the fashion of our militia or the German Landwehr. Perhaps this system of an armed militia, always ready for the field, was what, above all other reasons, enabled their detractors to represent the Jesuits as feared and unpopular. Why, it was asked, does this community of priests maintain an army in its territories? No one remembered that if such were not the case the missions could not have existed for a year without a force to defend their borders from the Paulistas. Everyone forgot that Fathers Montoya and Del Taño had obtained special permission from the King for the Indians of the missions to bear arms; and, as no human being is grateful for anything but contumelious treatment, the Spanish settlers conveniently forgot how many times a Jesuit army had saved their territories. The body of three thousand Guaranís sent at the expense of the Company to assist the Spaniards against the Portuguese at the attack upon the Colonia del Sacramento[192]on the river Plate, in 1678, was quite forgotten, together with the innumerable contingents sent by the Jesuits at the demand of Spanish governors against the Chaco Indians, the Payaguás, and even against the distant Calchaquis, in what is now the province of Jujuy. Even when an English pirate, called in the Spanish histories Roque Barloque (explained by some to be plain Richard Barlow), appeared off Buenos Ayres, the undaunted neophytes shrank not a moment from going to the assistance of their co-religionists against the ‘Lutheran dog’.[193]Lastly, all Spanish governors and writers, both contemporaneous and at the end of the eighteenth century, seem to forget that if the Jesuits had an army of neophytes within their territory the fact was known and approved of at the court of Spain.[194]But it appears that Calvin had many coadjutors in his policy of ‘Jesuitas aut necandi aut calumniis opponendi sunt.’[195]When a Jesuit army took the field, driving before it sufficient cattle to subsist upon, and with itscaballadaof spare horses upon its flank, it must have resembled many a Gaucho army I have seen in Entre Rios five-and-twenty years ago. The only difference seems to have been that the Gauchos of yesterday did not use bows and arrows, although they might have done so with as much benefit to themselves, and no more danger to their enemies, than was occasioned by the rusty, ill-conditioned guns they used to bear. The Indians were armed with bows, and in their expeditions each Indian carried one hundred and fifty arrows tipped with iron. Others had firearms, but all bore bolas on their saddles, and carried lazos and long lances,[196]which, like the Pampa Indians, they used in mounting their horses, placing one hand upon the mane, and vaulting into the saddles with the other leaning on the lance. The infantry were armed with lances and a few guns; they also carried bolas, but they trusted most to slings, for which they carried bags of hide, with a provision of smooth round stones, and used them dexterously. On several occasions their rude militia gave proofs of stubborn valour, and, as they fought under the Jesuits’ eyes, no doubt acquitted themselves as men would who looked upon their priests almost in the light of gods. But agriculture and cattle-breeding were not all the resources of the missions; for the Jesuits engaged in commerce largely, both with the outer world and by the intricate and curious barter system which they had set on foot for the mutual convenience of the different mission towns. In many of the inventories printed by Brabo, one comes across the entry ‘Deudas’, showing a sort of account current between the towns for various articles. Thus, they exchanged cattle for cotton, sugar for rice, wheat for pig-iron or tools from Europe; as no account of interest ever appears in any inventory as between town and town, it seems the Jesuits anticipated Socialism—at least, so far as that they bought and sold for use, and not for gain. Although between the towns of their own territory all was arranged for mutual convenience, yet in their dealings with the outside world the Jesuits adhered to what are known as ‘business principles’. These principles, if I mistake not, have been deified by politicians with their ‘Buy in the cheapest, sell in the dearest’ tag, and therefore even the sternest Protestant or Jansenist (if such there still exist) can have no stone to throw at the Company of Jesus for its participation in that system which has made the whole world glad.
Cotton and linen cloth, tobacco, hides, woods of the various hard-wood forests of the country, and, above all,yerba-maté, were their chief articles of export to the outside world. Their nearest market was in Buenos Ayres, and to that port they sent theiryerbain boats made at their own yards, of which they had several, but notably at Yapeyú upon the Uruguay. The money that was made was sent to the Superior of the missions, who had the disposition of the way in which it was dispensed, either for use at home or to be sent to Europe for necessary goods. As well asyerba-maté, they sent great quantities of hides. The inventories of the towns taken at the expulsion state that the number of green hides[197]exported annually was fifty thousand, together with six thousand cured; in addition they sold from three to four arrobas[198]of horse-hair, and wood to the value of twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars every year. The total export of theiryerbaranged between eighty and one hundred thousand arrobas, which at the lowest price could not have been sold at a profit under seven dollars an arroba,[199]so that the income[200]of the thirty towns must have been relatively large.[201]Two or three hundred barrels of honey[202]and some three or four thousand arrobas of tobacco made up the sum total of their exports, though, had they needed money, it might have been increased in such a country, and with so many willing labourers, almost indefinitely.
Thus it will be seen that the missions were organized both agriculturally and commercially so as to be almost self-supporting, and that of the mere necessaries of life they had sufficient for exportation, no small achievement when we consider how averse from labour were the Indians with whom they had to deal. But that nothing should be wanting that a civilized community could possibly desire, they had their prisons, with good store of chains, fetters, whips, and all the other instruments with which the moral code is generally enforced. The most usual punishment was whipping;[203]and the crimes most frequent were drunkenness, neglect of work, and bigamy, which latter lapse from virtue the Jesuits chastised severely, not thinking, being celibates themselves, that not unlikely it was apt to turn into its own punishment without the aid of stripes.